Monthly Archive: January 2015

29

Hmmm. This book could have been fantastic. Sadly, it was closer to mediocre. There is a lot of good information in it, and I am taking the message to heart. But it was not presented well, and so I can’t really recommend it to others. The author does have a website, however, which might be better (I haven’t checked it out yet).

The book takes quite a while to get going. The entire first chapter felt like filler. I think much of the information could have been shared in two or three pages, not 19.

In that intro, the author attempt to protect his ideas from criticism by saying that he abides by four principles, and if you don’t, that’s fine, but then this book is not for you. Those principles are:
1. You must be open to new ideas
2. You must be dissatisfied with the status quo
3. You must be willing to take personal responsibility
4. You must be willing to work hard

I am absolutely on board with 1, 2 and 4 as they are. And I’m on board with what I hope is the concept behind number 3. However. I find, based purely on my own experience, that “personal responsibility” is often the code privileged people use to blame other people for not doing what they do. I think the concept of taking control makes sense – I’m not a fatalist, and I don’t think people are just stuck wherever they are – but I’m also not so naïve as to think that a white dude living in the U.S.A. might have a bit of an easier time taking ‘personal responsibility’ than others.

But let’s move past that. As I said in the beginning, there is a lot of good stuff in here, but the way it is presented isn’t the best. Also, the author fills the book with anecdotes to illustrate his points (good) and little relevant quotes (also usually good). However, you might recall if you read my review of “Start with Why,” I’m quite aware of the gender and race of the examples authors choose to use. In this book, there were by my count 88 quotes and anecdotes; 73 were men and 13 were women. And most were white. It’s hard to view someone as a harbinger of non-conformity when so much of what he finds inspirational comes from such a homogenous group.

Is that entirely fair? Probably not. Especially because, as I’ve said a couple of times, there is a lot in here that is useful. It’s just not a good book.

26

If you read my post from this weekend you know that I expressed concern about the fact that the only information available on my Navient page is about my current loan, not my loan that I paid off last year. Mostly I was concerned that I might have missed out on important tax documents. From what I could tell, it appeared to be both a function of the loan being paid off and a function of it being a Department of Education (as opposed to Federal) loan.

A little before 9:30 this morning my phone rang, and the number that showed was Sallie Mae Client Services. I have that number in my phone because of a situation in 2011 where Sallie Mae double-debited my large monthly payment after switching bank accounts and raised enough of a stink that someone from their office called me. Now that Navient is managing things, they must have transferred the number to them.

Anyway, I answered the call and it turns out that the woman calling had read my blog post. Coming on the heels of my post last week about social media and the public nature of it, this did weird me out a bit. I realize that my real name is on Twitter, but I think I would have preferred the method other customer service reps have followed before: send me a DM asking if they could email me for more information.

The woman I spoke with was very polite and said that I was emailed something on January 9th that said I’d be getting my tax document for interest under a certain amount soon, and another email telling me I’d be getting my tax document for interest over that amount after that. I’m not sure why the complicated process, but either way I don’t have a record of those emails. However, in looking for that email I did find a different email from a week or so ago that has a link to my Department of Education Loan tax document. Because the subject line was identical to the one for my Federal Loan I deleted it. That’s definitely my oversight.

However, the woman I spoke with also said that I should have been able to access information about my Department of Education from my log-in page regardless. I gave her permission to view my account page, and when she got in she navigated a bit and then put me on hold. After coming back she asked if she could put me on hold again, as she thought this might be an issue she’d heard them talking about with respect to these DoE loans. I had to get to a meeting and so could not hold, but I was able to share with her that regardless of the system, people should be able to access paid loan information from the site and not have to find old emails to access a link that is specific to my account. My log in to their main site should be sufficient.

I think that message got through; we’ll see. But in the mean time I do appreciate that they took my comments seriously.

25

I’m not sure what drew me to this book. I’m not adopted, and I’m not aware of anyone close to me who was either adopted or surrendered a child for adoption. But it was probably the subtitle that pulled me in: ‘The hidden history of women who surrendered children for adoption in the decades before Roe v. Wade.’

The ‘solution’ to unplanned pregnancies for many anti-choice people is for the woman to carry the pregnancy to term and then surrender the child for adoption. That of course doesn’t solve the issue for women who don’t want to be pregnant (regardless of whether they want to raise their child). But it also really doesn’t take into account the impact surrendering a child for adoption has on many of the women who give birth.

This book is, to borrow a totally clichéd phrase, heart-wrenching. The focus is primarily on the middle-class white women who, between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s found themselves pregnant and (sometimes, although not always) alone. Ms. Fessler points out that during that time white women in the U.S. were surrendering children at a rate many times that of black women, which in part explains why the vast majority of the women she spoke to come from this demographic. The overwhelming common thread in these stories is not care for the young women, or even care for the children they gave birth to; instead, it seemed most families were mostly just concerned about being embarrassed by their daughters, and these young women were punished for that.

And it’s always the daughters. It appears that, for the most part, the young men and boys involved in the pregnancy were not affected – they certainly weren’t kicked out of high school like their pregnant girlfriends (which was the law in some places), and they weren’t sent away to maternity homes to finish out the nine months, deliver the child, and have the child taken away. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? Young teen and single moms are often derided still today, but I don’t see anyone going after the men who were just as present at the time of conception.

There’s so much wrong with what so many of these women went through. From not being informed of their rights, to being treated like crap by parents who clearly didn’t know how to care enough about their children (only about how the rest of the town might talk about them), these young women tell their stories throughout Ms. Fessler’s book. Each chapter is filled with quotes from women the author interviewed, and then followed by two chapters that are each one woman’s story told to illustrate the points being made. The biggest take-away for me is that these women should have been given the support they needed to keep their children if they wanted them; they instead were essentially treated like breeders for more ‘worthy’ couples. These women did not owe their children to these couples who wanted to adopt, but the social workers, nuns, priests and maternity home staff seemed to do all they could to convince these women that it was not fair to their children to keep them.

25

– “Likewise, much of the US right wing appears to have seized upon American Sniper with similarly shallow comprehension – treating it with the same unconsidered, rah-rah reverence that they would the national anthem or the flag itself. Only a few weeks into its release, the film has been flattened into a symbol to serve the interests of an ideology that, arguably, runs counter to the ethos of the film itself. How much, if at all, should Eastwood concern himself with fans who misunderstand and misuse his work? If he, intentionally or not, makes a hero out of Kyle – who, bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people – is he responsible for validating racism, murder, and dehumanisation? Is he a propagandist if people use his work as propaganda?” The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots treating him as a hero? (via @TheLindyWest)

Irony

– “A 16-year-old high school student was taken into police custody on Thursday and indicted for “defending terrorism,” national broadcaster France 3 reports. His alleged crime? He posted on Facebook a cartoon “representing a person holding the magazine Charlie Hebdo, being hit by bullets, and accompanied by an ‘ironic’ comment,” France 3 states.” France begins jailing people for ironic comments (via @intifada)

Page 3

– “This is the major problem with candid shots. They’re infinitely worse than posed photos. What does a photograph snapped without a woman’s knowledge or blessing say about our attitude towards consent? Paparazzi shots are invasive and, crucially, completely non-consensual. Fame, according to the paparazzi model, gives men the right to stalk women, to watch them through telescopic lenses while they think they are alone, to watch and wait for a moment deemed suitably titillating or humiliating.” And they’ve replaced Page 3 with something far worse. (via @stavvers)

– “It initially came across as a fairly benign campaign, to keep boobs out of a family paper. We can’t have kiddies staring at norks, can we? But… to try and position The Sun as a family newspaper, a main argument of NMP3, is laughable. If you want your children to have access to misogyny, homophobia, racism, antagonism towards those on state welfare, ableism, xenophobia, whorephobia and a whole host of other oppressive bullshit, that’s your own bad parenting; but don’t call it a family newspaper. In specifically going for one page, the movement has singled out consensual nudity as their priority over the host of nasties listed above.” A Few Thoughts o the Demise of Page 3 (h/t @melissagira)

Sex Work

– “And the Nordic model has often-damaging effects on sex workers’ health and safety. A 2010 review published by the Swedish Institute found that criminalization resulted in heightened harassment of sex workers, who felt that they were “hunted” by the police, and treated as “incapacitated persons” whose “wishes and choices are not respected.” The 2012 Global Commission report found that criminalization makes their lives “less safe and far riskier in terms of H.I.V.”” Canada’s Flawed Sex Trade Law (h/t @melissagira)

Parenting

– “However emotionally rewarding it may be for all involved, staying home with children exacts a serious, enduring vocational toll that largely explains the lingering pay gap between men and women as well as women’s higher rate of poverty. With the recession having raised the stakes, fewer mothers may be willing to take the risk. If it’s not yet the twilight of the stay-at-home mother, it could be her late afternoon. Certainly it is long past nap time.” Regrets of a stay-at-home mom (via @salon)

– “I don’t reveal anything that my child might consider private someday. I take this commandment pretty seriously and always err on the side of caution. I have no idea whether my son will grow up to be a relatively guarded person (like his mama) or a chronic over-sharer who loves gushing about his life online. Either would be fine with me, but the point is, I don’t know. There’s a chance he’d be fine with me sharing all kinds of details about his childhood, but there’s also a chance he won’t be and, for me, it’s just not worth the risk.” The Mom’s Guide to Ethical Internet Sharing

Racism

– “This white racial anxiety of not being at the center feels to me far more dangerous to black youth than seeing a film that tells them a story about themselves and their history. Having taught in D.C. public schools, I know D.C. youth aren’t checking for any kind of saviors, white or black. Like most adolescents, they are looking to find their path and make their mark.” Maureen Dowd’s clueless white gaze: What’s really behind the “Selma” backlash (h/t @capetownbrown)

23

We’re starting the process of gathering up our tax documents for 2014. Both Austin and I paid off the vast majority of our student loans in 2014 (I still have a tiny one from NYU); it was an exciting fall. We both also just got our “your tax docs are ready” email from Navient this week, so we signed into our accounts to check one item off the list.

Austin’s was fine and as expected. Mine, however, was surprisingly low. Given the giant interest rate on my LSE loan (why hello, 8.25%, how are you), you can imagine my surprise when my Navient 1098-E showed I’d paid less than a Seahawks ticket’s worth of interest in 2014.

I clicked on every link on Navient’s website, trying to find the paid off loan graveyard, or a link to Department of Education Loans (my LSE one was a DoE loan; my NYU one is not). I even tried going back to Sallie Mae but they wouldn’t even let me sign in. Yikes.

Luckily, I still had my “Congratulations!” email from November, announcing the loan was paid off. From a link in there I was able to access my DoE loans documents page, which had a link for a 1098-E form. Which showed nearly a month’s rent worth of interest paid.

Now, we probably aren’t going to be able to deduct any of this. However, if I hadn’t remembered that my loans were two different types, and if I hadn’t gone in search of that email, I have no idea how I could have found this pretty important tax document. And because people sometimes do searches (I know a couple people have found my blog searching for Navient issues), I thought I’d share what worked for me.

22

The past few days on social media have just been … odd. It started with the State of the Union, where I found myself getting physically tense because an author whose book I was reading (and at that point enjoying) starting tweeting some really problematic items. Things that disparaged people with low incomes, people who need childcare, people who need healthcare. Then I continued reading the book, got to a really disturbing part, and had to figure out how to write a review that would go up on a public blog that expressed my anger but that wasn’t over the top. Once I did post the review, a friend asked if I’d thought of contacting the author to see why she seems (to me) to have this huge disconnect in her writing, and I responded honestly that I can’t do it on Twitter because who knows what kind of responses such a public figure would elicit, and I won’t do it privately because I don’t trust that she wouldn’t put it on her blog and mock me.

Then, last night, I made a mistake and deleted everything from the 2 Do app. If you use it, you’re probably familiar with the interface. Each tab is a category, including one that says ‘all’ and one that says ‘done.’ While there are many steps to delete items, if you are in the wrong tab, there could be 100 steps and it still wouldn’t matter, because you’re already in the wrong place. Anyway, user error, I deleted everything from the ‘all’ tab instead of the ‘done’ one. But 2 Do allegedly has multiple back-ups, including to Toodledo and one on the Android itself. Both Austin and I jumped into action, but neither backup system worked. And that was not user error – that was the app not functioning as advertised. I posted a (surprisingly not snarky) tweet mentioning the issue. They responded with those same fix options (which I appreciate), and I thanked them but said neither worked, so I was going to have to switch apps.

Then things got weird. Whoever manages their social media decided that it would be funny to get snarky and question why I would change apps due to “human error.” They even included a smiley face. I said if they mean human error as in the humans who programmed both back-up systems that failed, then yes. I, too, included a smiley face. After that I stopped responding, as I was at work. But I the next time I checked Twitter I found something like eight messages from the 2 Do account (I can’t confirm, because I’ve now blocked them) essentially trying to call me stupid.

Look, I freely admit that the initial error was mine. But since the back-up system the app claims to have (multiple ones, actually) didn’t work, I think the less reasonable thing to do would be to stick with them. If I make an error again – or the app itself freaks out – I don’t want to lose everything a second time. I didn’t choose to engage, because I got a brief taste of the attitude that comes with engaging with someone who isn’t happy with you on social media. The repeated tweets brought with them someone who thought it would be fun to @ me and join in the snark. Which, dude. I don’t know you. You get blocked. And now so does 2 Do. It was the tiniest of tastes of the kind of bizarre entitlement that social media brings with it, and I did not like it. And I starting thinking about what kind of entitlement I feel when I’m on social media.

Somewhere in the middle of that, I chose to tweet on the #7in10forRoe tag related to the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. It was a pretty basic tweet, but it ended up retweeted by NARAL and Huffington Post (their ‘women’ account, I believe). Which then brought many more favorites than I’m used to, and a few new followers. Yes, I’m on social media in part to interact with others, but coupled with everything else it just struck me as … weird.

Apparently, despite writing a public blog, and maintaining two public twitter accounts, I’m really not comfortable with public social media interactions. It was a good reminder that there are people (like me) behind these accounts, but also that sometimes the people behind those accounts act like giant assholes. Did I include 2 Do in my first tweet in the hopes of getting a response? Definitely. Although for once I wasn’t trying to shame a company who fucked up – and yet I ended up getting treated poorly all the same. Not sure what the lesson for me here is, other than maybe it’s time to cool it with the #ing and the @ing for a spell.

21

Great title, right? GREAT title. I love etiquette books, as evidenced by my many reviews of such books. When I see a book on etiquette, or manners, I tend to snap it up. This one, however, has taught me about more than just manners; it has reminded me of the fact that the people who write these books we devour and then write about are real people. In fact, I think that much of what I read in this book has helped me to write a kinder review of it, if that makes any sense (and might surprise any of you who followed my Twitter ranting last night).

This book starts out really well. In fact, I think this is the most challenging review I’ve ever written because it is nine really solid chapters, two amazing chapters, and one utterly awful shit show of a chapter. Instead of the usual layout of a couple of scenarios and then some advice, Ms. Aklon treats manners and etiquette the way I think, in many respects, they should be treated: not as rules to follow, but as ways to think and act that can a) make life for others more pleasant and b) help you assert yourself so that your own life can be more pleasant. She offers a lot of fun little suggestions – some I plan to employ – told with anecdotes of how she’s acted (or reacted) when faced with people with poor manners or a lack of empathy.

Then I read the dating chapter. If you read this whole book but skipped this chapter, you’d probably look at me sideways when I say that the suggestions offered up in this chapter are sexist and even a little transphobic. But they are. The author starts the chapter off by warning the reader that some of what she’s about to say is going to sound a lot like what our grandmothers tell us … but that we should listen, because our grandmothers are right. Ultimately, it just meant that Ms. Aklon’s advice was about to get really conservative really quickly.

The dating chapter reduces men and women to Mars vs. Venus. The entire argument appears to me to be that men want hot women, and that women want a good provider (no mention of gay people, lesbians, or bisexuals). So men need to shell out money and women need to look good. I mean, she adds in more words and briefly suggests that it’s all a bit unfortunate, but when you boil it down, what remains is a lot of stereotyping and sexism.

That would be frustrating enough, but there is a section that really turned my stomach. In this section Ms. Aklon uses an example of woman turning a man down to tell the story of how not to treat others. Before I go further, please keep in mind that before this chapter, and after – basically throughout the entire rest of the book – Ms. Aklon’s advice seems to me to hinge on the idea that no one else has a right to your time. They don’t have a right to invade your space on a train, or make you listen to their music on a flight. They don’t have a right to litter in front of your house (taking away your time by forcing you to clean it up). So much of her advice depends on the idea that we all have the right to our own time and space.

Okay? You with me?

The example Ms. Aklon uses is one I know (you can read the full original posthere; in fact I suggest you do, and then keep in mind how Ms. Aklon chooses which parts to include to illustrate her point). It made the rounds on feminist blogs a few months ago, and when I first read it I had a physical reaction because I could relate to what the woman went through. The story one example of the experience the woman has with street (train) harassment. This woman always wears a (fake) wedding ring and reads a book on the train so that people (men – it is always men) will leave her alone. In this example, which includes multiple men who will not leave her alone, the woman takes every opportunity to let the men know she is not interested, to leave her alone, and to back off, to the point where she basically fears for her safety. It’s horrifying; sadly most women I know who live in an urban environment have experienced some version of this story.

So, why does Ms. Aklon use this example? Surely it must be to point out to men how terrifying they can be when they ignore the signs women show them (the book, the not engaging, the short responses), right? Surely she felt the need to reproduce this familiar tale in her book because it is a very clear lesson of how men should not act around women, right?

Nope. She finds the woman’s actions to be outrageous. Not the man who tells her to suck his dick, or who says if he had a gun he would kill her. No, in Ms. Aklon’s telling of the story, it is the woman who acted incorrectly because she did not want to interact with men who she (rightly) worried could act in this way.

The author does not seem to understand that by saying “again, she couldn’t just extend herself just a little by … making some excuse?” she is actively contributing to the culture that make men think they have the right to women’s time. If you aren’t street harassed multiple times each day then you just do not have a clue. Every time we ‘extend ourselves’ the asshole talking to us takes it as a sign that we want to engage them in further conversation. We literally cannot win. Either we’re stone cold bitches or we’re sending mixed signals.

The author also makes a transphobic comment when talking about dating sites, explaining that one reader (she has an advice blog) said he was tricked about someone’s gender. Her response was that ‘being a woman isn’t just a state of mind.’ Now, because the author provided no context, the only thing I can assume is that the person on the dating site was transgender and decided (rightly) that the status of their genitalia was not up for discussion on the first date. And the author’s response was to make a comment that implies transgender women are not women.

Whew.

Despite that section, the rest of the book mostly returns to its former awesomeness. The chapter on friends who are seriously ill is, frankly, lovely. But as I said at the top of this review, reading this book made me think about the authors who write the books we read. Before I got to the dating chapter in this book, I decided to follow Ms. Aklon on Twitter. I was looking forward to some great little snarky etiquette tips peppered in with my breaking news tweets and cute cat pictures. But last night was the state of the union address, which Ms. Aklon chose to live tweet. And suddenly I was reminded that the author is a person, and people are inconsistent. And even though she may not choose to express empathy via her twitter feed, she at least argues for others to have empathy – and compassion – in (all but one chapter of) her book. And that is something.

19

Do you like maps? Infographics? Data? London? Do you think Edward Tufte is a genius? Then do I have a book for you…

I love maps. I think they are my favorite form of decoration. They are also fascinating to me – the idea that someone figured out and then drew to scale where every little bit of a place is. One of my favorite episodes of the West Wing involves a discussion of how maps can both show data and distort it, and how that has implications for much more than just visual aesthetics.

This book takes all manner of data to create 100 maps and infographics that do, as promised, ‘change how you view the city.’ I was lucky enough to live in London for a year, so some of the maps might mean a bit more to me than someone who has never visited, but I think that a similar book for a city I’ve never visited (say, Mexico City, or Chicago) would still be just as fascinating.

The authors break the maps down into five broad categories: where we are, who we are, where we go, how we’re doing and what we like. In a couple of the sections, the authors take very old maps, and overlay velum with new information so you can view how things (such as the distribution of poverty) have changed. At other times they use sparklines to show how death rates have changed by each of the 32 boroughs and by cause of death. They take a survey that measured four different components of happiness and created a system so that by looking at the eyes, mouth, shading and lines tell how those components all interact, on average, by borough.

Some of the graphics are quirky and, while interesting, are worth a quick read; others I could have spent an hour pouring over. Some are also just stunning; in fact, as a birthday present my husband ordered one of the graphics, and it is being framed as we speak. Like I said, I love maps.

This book is a snapshot; it was published in fall 2014 so the information should be thought of as a glimpse in time; some of the information came from the 2011 census (the data just having been released in 2013). I hope that they will revisit this concept after the 2021 census, creating new but related infographics so we can see how the diverse city is changing.

18

I’m known for being quite sarcastic. I know that some people find sarcasm to be the lowest form of communication; I’m okay with that. So it isn’t surprising that, as part of a trio of joke gifts (the other items being a screaming pickle and a Jesus refrigerator magnet set), my husband and I were gifted this book by our friends.

It is so bad. I don’t know what they were going for, but unless it was unoriginality, they missed the mark. I know that it is odd to call out a book about insults and comebacks as being too mean … but it is. It’s not clever, it’s extremely lazy. There are certainly things that people should be insulted for – cruelty, racism, bigotry – but that doesn’t really comprise any of the insults in this book. Instead, the authors go for the insults that uphold the status quo. There’s nothing subversive about mocking people who are fat, or ugly, or mentally ill. It doesn’t require any cleverness. I’m guessing that literally anyone reading this review can come up with a (completely unfunny) fat joke at the drop of a hat, because society thinks fat people should be mocked.

For a book of insults to be worth reading, I think it should include the type of insults that really cut to the bone. Figure out insults for the people who mock fat people. Come up with some comebacks to when someone marks on another person’s mental health status. If you’re wanting to joke about hygiene, do something better than offer “you must be a feminist” (like, what?).

You’ll notice this book is available on Amazon for $.01. Save your money – it’s not worth that.

18

This is the third of Dr. Gawande’s books I’ve read and reviewed for Cannonball Read, and it’s probably my least favorite. However, it’s still a decent book that I’m glad I read.

The book is ostensible about ‘how success is achieved in this complex and risk-filled profession,’ talking about medicine. And there are certainly many really compelling stories about medicine. But I wasn’t really able to follow any sort of coherent theme to the stories. I almost felt like I was reading a collection of interesting essays as opposed to a book that was seeking to make a strong point about how to improve the field of medicine (and, in turn, other field).

Dr. Gawande splits the stories into three sections: diligence, doing right, and ingenuity. There are three-five stories in each section that purport to demonstrate the benefits of diligence, doing right or ingenuity. I think the strongest, most interesting section for me is the Doing Right section, especially in areas such as the ethics of physicians participating in the death penalty. And as I said, all of the stories are interesting to read, but I don’t think Dr. Gawande does a great job connecting them or really telling the ready what point he’s looking to make.

The book ends with a few pages that seem to come out of nowhere but that I think could have been woven into the book to create that theme that I felt was missing. Dr. Gawande proposes five things to do to improve in your field: ask an unscripted question, don’t complain, count something, write something, and change. I can see applying these to my current work, and would have enjoyed reading more about them in relation to the stories he has told throughout the book.